Less than a week after 29-year-old Veronica Rutledge was shot and killed by her two-year-old son in an Idaho Walmart, another Idaho woman the same age, was arrested for leaving her gun in reach of her young children. Kathleen Allen, 29, was arrested in Idaho Falls early Tuesday evening. Allen was charged with felony injury to a child for leaving a loaded gun within reach of her 4-year-old and her infant child.
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Police made the arrest after conducting a welfare check at the home. In addition to finding an unsecured .40 caliber pistol, the officers also found syringes and an undisclosed quantity of methamphetamine.
This arrest comes just days after a mother from Blackfoot Idaho, a town about 30 miles south of Idaho Falls, was shot by her toddler with a firearm left unattended in her purse. 5-year-old Noelle Shawver, also from Blackfoot, was killed in an accidental shooting by another 5-year-old in Chubbuck, Idaho on July 30, 2014. Prosecutors are still considering filing child endangerment charges against the shooter’s parents in that incident.
Idaho’s death by firearm rate is 26 percent higher than the national average. Western states and Southern states dominate the list of states with the highest gun death rates. In 2012, Idaho had the third highest gun suicide rate in the country, trailing only Montana and Alaska. The top three gun homicide rates were in the Southern states of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama.
Accidental gun deaths are less frequent than either suicides or homicides, but the mortality rate for children dying from accidental shootings is considerably higher in states with high rates of gun ownership. 40 percent of U.S. gun owners with children under 18, do not lock up there guns for safe storage.
Kathleen Allen is fortunate that neither she nor her children were injured or killed. Leaving deadly weapons in the reach of small children is a form of negligence that can have lethal consequences. Parents who fail to secure their weapons should be held accountable, before more children put their lives, or the lives of others, at risk with a gun that was not properly secured.
Keith Brekhus
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Keith Brekhus is a longtime political activist who currently resides in Red Lodge, Montana. He has a Master’s Degree in Sociology from the University of Missouri-Columbia. He was a Green Party candidate for Congress in 2002. His most recent political job was working as a Field Organizer in Arizona’s White Mountains, in support of Democratic Congresswoman Ann Kirkpatrick’s successful 2014 re-election campaign.
